


warning signs; when completely ignored

by lesblep



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Allura and Lance Are Good Friends And You Cannot Stop Me From Writing Them That Way, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Flashbacks, I TAKE THE HAMMER. I FIX THE CANON., Klance Reverse Bang 2018, Lance (Voltron) Has Two Moms, Love Confessions, M/M, Mentions of Broganes, Soundtrack Included, art included
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-19
Updated: 2018-04-19
Packaged: 2019-04-24 22:21:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14364918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lesblep/pseuds/lesblep
Summary: If there's one thing Keith knows how to do, it's run. The only problem is he never learned when it was okay to stop.Or: Lance may be homesick, but Keith doesn't even have a home to be sick for.





	warning signs; when completely ignored

[accompanying art](https://maximtomate.tumblr.com/post/172983133848/the-spectrum-of-love)

[soundtrack on youtube](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJEg8wIEEdApIZwopvSwS_tAO5FmPcGVf)

[soundtrack on spotify](https://open.spotify.com/user/tv4q7ucxpl66p59o6579wnxb7/playlist/5hNBIlW2gqY8hAGhFr4fYg)

 

* * *

 

When Keith was- eleven, maybe, since it was after his father died but before his growth spurt- he got shuffled off to his very first foster home. It was a muddy sort of grey and had no lawn to speak of. It sagged, rather than simply sat, next door to an identical house, which was next door to another identical house, and so on. The entire neighbourhood continued this pattern, and as awful as it seemed in introduction, it was the first, and the most memorable, and one of the best.

 

The inside was more interesting. It contained exactly seven bookshelves, four of which Keith could reach without help, and on those four was a total of nine-and-a-half books he could actually stand to read. The half was a car repair manual, and the half he liked was the pictures and diagrams on how the machinery worked when you put it together. Keith hasn’t seen an honest-to-god actual car in ages, just speeders and hoverbikes and, once, on one of his favourite planets, boats with silken wings attached. He remembers his own hoverbike fondly, and took a gear from its inner workings before they left Earth.

 

Somewhere along the way to the patch of space they’ve been floating through for the past three quintants, Keith picked up a scrap of cloth to hang his gear on as a necklace, and it’s this necklace he fiddles with now.

 

Allura got it into her head that it was absolutely necessary for the humans to get medical checkups in between every few distress calls, so he’s found himself seated on the edge of a hovering cot in the medbay, waiting for Coran to stop flitting from cabinet to cabinet and just let him leave already.

 

“The issue, number four,” he says, twirling his mustache as he does a quick pirouette instead of just turning around like a normal person, “is that your genetic makeup is completely unprecedented! If we had known Galra-human couplings could result in viable offspring, we wouldn’t be here for so long.”

 

Keith groans, because he’s Keith, and watches Coran pull out a horrifyingly spiky something-or-other, examine it with a too-eager eye, then promptly put it back in the drawer it came from. “Can you at least explain why I’ve been here so long?”

 

Coran hums an assent. “Need to examine your sight. You wouldn’t make much of a paladin if you were blind, now would you?” His voice echoes from the crawlspace he’s put his entire upper torso into, before he shouts “aha!” and emerges holding what looks remarkably like a magnifying glass, expect this one is triangular, glows a soft grey, and has an Altean syringe for a handle. “This, dear boy, is a flenumar.”

 

“A _what_?” Keith eyes the needle cautiously.

 

“A flenumar,” Coran repeats brightly. “Sit still! I’d rather not perform any ocular surgery today.” The Altean pokes him in the sclera with a gloved finger, making the boy hiss, and nods to himself. “Intriguing. You’re colourblind, just like the other humans. Why?”

 

“‘Cause,” Keith says, parroting the lecture his middle-grade class got about this particular topic, “humans are colourblind until they fall in love.” He also remembers asking what if you don’t really want to get your colours, and his foster sister hushing him when he asked the same question at the dinner table that night, but. This is different. This is space, where he’s been floating around for a good long while now and he doesn’t get hushed for asking questions anymore and there sure as hell aren’t any foster sisters here, unless you count Pidge and Allura, which he doesn’t.

 

“Hmm. Reminds me of the Klissre species. They grow feathers out of their ears,” Coran gestures to his own before leaning back in to tuck the flenu-whatever behind Keith’s ear, “and were deaf until they chose their three mates. One for each ear, y’see, and started losing feathers when they did.”

 

Keith can’t even begin to imagine growing feathers out of his ears. “Sounds itchy,” he says. The alien magnifier stabs into his tear duct, and he blinks, saying “ow” more from the surprise than the short burst of pain. “Humans just have one soulmate, usually.”

 

“Alteans have nothing of the sort,” Coran peers into the thing-umar, “I’ve got all the colours I need, thank you!” And so it goes. The needle emerges from Keith’s eye with a nearly inaudible _pop,_ Coran pats him on the shoulder, already examining the blood he's drawn, and shoos him out of the bay in a flurry of hand gestures. “Send in number five, next!”

 

“Which one is that, again?” Keith asks, but the door’s already whisked itself shut, nearly clipping his nose. It’s probably Pidge, who’s probably busy programming the food goo machine to assassinate them all in their sleep like she threatened the other quintant. He doesn’t really intend on getting a faceful of goo at the moment. So much for being a fearless leader, a defender of the universe. Maybe Lance is more willing to get smacked in the face by the resident gremlin.

 

(This is what it means to be alive, Keith has discovered over the past eighteen years:

 

  * You breathe. You keep breathing. You do _not_ hyperventilate, because space has a limited amount of oxygen.
  * You eat. Even when it's goo, and although it technically has all of the essential minerals you need, but it's disgusting.
  * You sleep. You don't wake up in the middle of the night to stare at the wall or your knife or pace around the halls of the castle until you end up in front of your missing brother's door. You sleep, and you stay asleep, and you don't wake up until you have to.



 

This is what it means to _live:_

 

  * Keith's not too sure just yet.)



 

***

 

Lance, it turns out, is bored out of his skull.  
  
This doesn't mean much, unfortunately- there are two states of being when you're in space- boredom and battle ready. Right now, Lance has exhausted his supply of things to do. He spent all of yesterday going through the flight sim on solo mode. The high score, obviously, belongs solely to Allura, but he did pretty well for himself. The Altean's sim is much better than the Garrison's.  
  
“One might even say it's _out of this world_ ,” Hunk had joked once, and Lance had to physically restrain himself from groaning and throwing his best friend headfirst into oblivion. He loves him, he really does, but the puns are a bit much sometimes. The sim is better because it's got a storyline to follow. It's almost a movie, or a VR game- a fact that Pidge reveled in until she finished the full campaign. She still won't tell Lance if the ending is worth it.  
  
Anyway.  
  
His list of things to do is rapidly deteriorating unless he wants to go find Allura and get his ass kicked in the pairs sim. Lance _does_ enjoy bothering Hunk into telling him (again) about how, exactly, Quintessence powers everything onboard the Castle, since his eyes light up like nobody’s business when he gets to talk about things he enjoys, but Hunk has a lot on his mind, probably, right now. Pidge is always good for a laugh- maybe she’s in a good mood?- but as Lance runs through the options in his head he finds his way into the main lounge and “oh, hey Keith, fancy meeting you here.”

 

Keith’s tucked himself into the corner of a sofa, curled around a tablet. His eyes flick back and forth, reading just as fast he he makes decisions, which is to say, _pretty damn fast._ He looks up at Lance, blinking slowly. The usually harsh lights of the Altean ship have been dimmed since it's the night cycle, casting half of Keith’s face in grey and the other in, well, a paler grey. Colour-blindness is a bitch sometimes. “Lance.” He says. “I was planning on using you as a human shield to tell Pidge to go to her appointment.”

 

“Then why didn’t you call me up sooner? I _love-”_ Lance throws himself bodily onto the couch in a swoon- “getting attacked by gremlins and my soul eaten for power.” A snicker from Keith, who clamps a hand over his mouth to stifle it, and _come now, that’s a waste._ He army-crawls across the couch, flat on his stomach, dragging himself by his elbows to pat at Keith’s face until he can take hold of his wrist and toss it aside. “Smile, partner. It’d be a crime to cover that up. You'll get sent to space jail, and then we'd have to find another black paladin. Again. Because you'd be in jail.”

 

“Are you calling me partner because I told you I lived in Texas for two years?”

 

“No.” He’s such a liar. “Up for something fun?” Keith lifts an eyebrow in reply. “I mean real fun, too, like touring the castle in search of a ballroom and recreating the 1997 classic Anastasia from memory.”

 

“I never saw that movie,” Keith says.

 

“You’re the absolute worst, so I’m not surprised. But I mean it- you need to relax somehow, or the next time Allura says we have to play nice you’ll end up beheading an ambassador.” Lance stands back up, rocks back and forth, heel-toe, heel-toe, heel-toe. Gotta expel excess energy somehow.

 

The black paladin smiles, kneading at the fabric of the couch, alternating with his knuckles and his palms like a cat. Lance pushes down the urge to call Keith a furry, because it’d go right over his head. “I relax plenty. I know what fun is.”

 

“Then tell me what you do for fun,” Lance replies, keeping his posture as professional as possible while trying not to laugh, and Red purrs in agreement, vibrating through his spine and using his skeleton as a tuning fork and prompting him _run, run away,_ all the energy in the universe rushing into his veins.

 

Keith looks only mildly bewildered, to his credit. “...Swords?”

 

“Swords aren't a verb.”

 

“Sword fighting?”

 

“You call that _fun_?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“You're impossible. We're going flying.” Lance taps his foot, the very image of impatience.

 

***

 

And Keith remembers, vividly, a time when a diplomatic mission went wrong. The planet they went to had had floating islands to make up for the lack of solid land, connected by bridges of some sort of tungsten alloy according to Hunk, and an unexpected seismic event caused four out of five paladins (minus Allura, because she was graceful enough to dance away from the edge in time) to fall down, down, into the ocean.

 

He had clawed his way to the surface, alien water burning in his eyes, lids caked with salt, desperate to find Pidge first because she was the smallest and had the least lung capacity and _what if she never found her colours, what would Shiro say, why the hell did they leave behind their helmets anyway, what if they found Sam and Matt Holt and they asked where their missing family member was, how could he ever explain-_

 

-and the next thing he knew Lance’s head was popping out of the ocean beside him, a certain green-armoured someone slung over one shoulder, and then Hunk appeared looking no worse for wear, and the three of them tread water together, coughing but _alive,_ until Allura summoned Blue with the sheer force of her will and Pidge woke up back in medbay with the inhabitants of the castle hovering anxiously above her, spitting out a steady stream of water, acting like it was a minor inconvenience rather than a near-death experience. Coran insisted keeping her there so he could fuss over her a bit longer, and Lance had slung an arm over Keith's shoulders, nudged him with a hip until he left her bedside to go eat dinner.

 

He feels like that now, like he’s finally broken the surface and Lance is there and Keith just _knows_ that he’s going to be okay. Like everything in the world could try to pull him under, to drown him in anxieties and expectations and Shiro still being missing, and all he has to do is look to his right hand man.

 

(Keith doesn’t think he could drown if he wanted to anymore.)

 

“I’m coming,” he finds himself saying through a curtain of laughter. He leaves his jacket on the sofa, tablet nested within, and follows Lance to the hangars.

 

Red is waiting for them, eyes aglow and purring like a sphinx on the brink of biting off someone’s head for failing to answer her riddle correctly, and when Lance puts his hand on her paw she informs him that there’s a galactic collision nearby and _wouldn’t it be amazing to fly directly into the heart of a storm?_ He tells her, sternly, that would be very painful for all parties involved, and Keith snorts in the background at the expressions on Lance’s face while he _very reasonably_ explains why two galaxies smashing into each other would probably kill the squishy humans.

 

“Good news,” Lance says finally, twirling around as quickly as possible to make his jacket fan behind him like a cape, “Red’s agreed not to boil us alive in the nearby collision, on the condition that I’m the pilot because _she likes me better-_ ” he finishes his sentence in a sing-song voice, and Keith can’t help but _want_.

 

What he wants, exactly, is one of the major mysteries of the universe, just like where did Haxus’ body even go after Pidge kind-of-murdered him in the engine room? But he doesn’t fight it, not really. “You’re flying. Got it.”

 

Lance takes a moment to grin, a tiny snapshot of sunlight captured in his smile eons ago, and Keith stands back and watches him nod at Red, who lowers her head and allows them both to stroll into the cockpit. The pilot's seat rises from the floor, silent and smooth, glowing what is apparently also red, and Lance tosses himself into it, legs slung over one of its arms before he adjusts into proper piloting posture.

 

“Hold on tight,” Lance says, “your boots won't have as much traction as the ones from your paladin suit.”

 

And they blast off, airlock shutting behind them and a puff of dust escaping into space. The force pulls at Keith's hair, and he exhales mildly, the lion whispering something along the lines of _he's doing great, don't you think?_ In the world's most self-congratulating voice.

 

Keith grips the back of the chair, knuckles white. Red is soaring, pleasure thrumming through every atom, and Lance hums along to her metronomic purr, an old, old song from when their grandparents were kids.

 

Keith _knows_ that song.

 

As they leave the castle far behind, he hums along. Lance squeaks, whipping around fast enough that the control handles snap back into place, Red changing her tone to a scolding one before activating autopilot. “You know this song _,_ ” he says, more breath than actual words. “You, Keith, know _this song._ ” His knuckles are drawn pale as he grips the back of his chair, fingers barely brushing Keith's own.

 

“Um. Yeah?” Keith watches clouds shift over the other paladin's face. “I only ever had enough creds for a few songs, and there was a sale-” his explanation peters out at Lance's crestfallen expression.

 

“It was,” a pause, an inhale, a precarious moment balanced on a bayard's edge, “my mamá's favourite song.” Lance sniffs after a beat of silence when Keith doesn't reply. “And my mamí's least favourite, but when you're married you can't have the same opinions on everything because that's boring.” His eyes are twinkling, now.

 

“Tell me about them?” Keith offers, and he can _feel_ the change in the cockpit’s atmosphere. Lance visibly lights up. _Adorable,_ his mind, or maybe Red, offers, and Keith is obliged to agree.

 

“My mamí,” Lance says with a dramatic gesture of his hand, spreading out an invisible photo album in the air between them, “is no mere mortal. There are some who tell tales of her parenting prowess in hushed whispers in back alleys. She is,” a harsh breath, grating against his vocal cords, the world's most uncomfortable violinist, “a one-hundred-percent legit goddess.”

 

“Like, _Zeus_ , or-”

 

Lance snorts. “Like my mamí would ever associate herself with that sad excuse of a god. Honestly, dude’s got nothing on her lectures, lightning is fun and all but her disappointment could disintegrate Zarkon in like, two seconds. She'd be a _way_ better black paladin than you- no offense,” he interrupts himself to look back at Keith. Red chirps, amused. As if Black would allow that, possessive as she is.

 

“I don't think the universe would survive two McClains as paladins,” Keith replies flatly, and the way Lance laughs is worth every GAC they've ever collected across the last few months and more.

 

“My mamá-” Lance continues, “-loves terrible old music. And terrible new music. And she's way shorter than you, even. And she’s a hopeless romantic, always asks after mine and my siblings’ love lives. And she never cleans her glasses so they're always smudged until mamí cleans 'em for her.”

 

Sometimes, Lance doesn't say, watching Keith's lips quirk in a smile, his mothers push all the furniture in the living room up against the walls and argue about the music and by the time mamá wins the argument (she always wins) he and Marco and Luis and Veronica are watching their moms dance, kick at each other's shins and trip over the carpet and the dog and laugh when the music gets gravelly and unbearable because the radio signal in their house is practically nonexistent and and and-

 

-and Keith leans in, smile disappeared, gone into the void of space, lost to oblivion, which is _a damn shame_ , and thumbs cautiously at the corner of Lance's eye. “You're crying,” he mutters.

 

“Yeah, well.” Lance slaps his hands away, too firmly, too quickly. “Good reason.”

 

This is how the lions speak: a combination of metallic cat-noises, purrs and growls, and the feeling of urgency they push at you, the feeling of pleasure when you manage a particularly complicated barrel roll, the feeling of concern when you're too-silent as you sit in the cockpit.

 

 _Let me tell you a story,_ Red doesn't-say, interrupts the tense silence between the two of them, presses images rather than actual words into their heads, here, hold this tight and don't let go, _about a boy a lot like the two of you, red paladins past and present._

 

They drift apart, and Keith's hand gravitates to his necklace. He does not look at Lance, trails of wetness over his cheeks notwithstanding. Lance does not look at Keith, it's not his fault he's homesick, and they make a silent agreement, of sorts, to do whatever the lion says so Voltron can continue to exist. Red continues, _there was a boy_ , almost frustrated when her story’s speed is beyond their (mostly) human minds to grasp, images blurring together.

 

 _There was a boy,_ she begins again, _there was a boy and I loved him and he was a king, and his people loved him, and he was happy._

 

“Alfor,” Lance whispers the name like a prayer, because he remembers Allura's father better than Keith, because she talks about him like he's there, like she's forgotten the fiery ten-thousand-years-ago death of her planet, because she trusts her friend to listen when she speaks of her father.

 

Keith remembers a haunted castle, a faulty airlock, a glitching robot, a pair of chests heaving for breath, a star threatening to devour the castle-ship as it died. Alfor's name brings back fear, not much more.

 

 _He loved,_ Red says. _He loved and was loved and trusted his team- his_ family- _and he was betrayed._

 

They don't both understand. Of course they don't. Keith tugs at his necklace, pictures bruised knuckles and split lips and betrayal tastes like Garrison cafeteria food and saltwater and grit in every pore and Shiro missing. Lance has never been betrayed. Hopefully he never will, because something so unkind done to a boy who loves so easily would be cruelty to the universe, too.

 

She's scolding them. _Once there was a boy, and he loved. Don't-quite-follow in his footsteps, kittens, and trust those who belong to your pride, and speak the truth to each other, always, always._ She leaves their minds all at once, postures straightening when the weight of an ancient being lifts herself off their shoulders.

 

“I'm sorry,” Keith says immediately. “I didn't mean to remind you of Earth.”

 

“Shut up,” Lance replies, and hugs him. “I miss them, yeah, but it's not your fault we're in space.”

 

“Technically it's Shiro’s, he's the superior officer and _he_ wanted to go through the mysterious wormhole we knew nothing about even though we could've died horribly in transit,” Keith says into the crook of Lance's neck, and they laugh. Together.

 

Lance fingers the cord around his friend’s neck when he draws back. “Is this from-”

 

“Yeah,” Keith already knows what he’s going to say. “I didn’t want to forget.”

 

“I get it,” Lance replies. “Wanna know something weird?” The light of the collusion starts to stream through the cockpit, patterns crossing his face, warpaint made of stardust and old music and all things hopeful. Keith nods and Lance exhales hastily as he sits back down. Keith perches on the arm of the chair. “I used to be jealous of you.”

 

Keith sputters. “Dude!”

 

He holds up a hand. “It sounds bad! I know! Just, listen. The Garrison was utter bullshit. Iverson compared me to you at every turn after you left and I made it into fighter class. Made me feel inept when I screwed up the simulation- which I’m pretty sure makes purposely bad turns- and I wondered what you’d do in my place. Hopefully stand up for yourself, because I did the exact opposite of that. And then Hunk showed up, and Pidge, and the rest is history.” Lance huffs, and reaches out to brush a stray hair off of Keith’s face. “I’m glad you’re not the jerk I thought you were, who left me to get yelled at for things beyond my control.”

 

“I punched Iverson in the face before I left,” Keith blurts out, pressing Lance’s hand back to his own chest when he starts heating up beyond comfort. “Thought you’d want to know.” Lance freezes, then claps both hands over his mouth. A muffled giggle escapes him, face prickling warmth, and he finds himself laughing at the thought of his friend punching the commander right in his angry, eye-patched face. “I’m serious!” Keith’s eyes narrow, and he puts one tentative hand on Lance’s shoulder. “He wouldn’t tell me if Shiro was dead or alive, so I just- punched him.”

 

There are tears in Lance’s eyes, probably. “ _Holy crow,_ ” he wheezes out, “Wish I could’ve seen that.”

 

“Trust me,” Keith doesn’t-quite smile. “Wasn’t as cool as it sounds.”

 

Lance starts to say something hilarious, because everything that comes out of his mouth is pure poetry, but Keith’s dumb face is pretty distracting. Dude’s pale, should go outside more often, really. Next planet that has a breathable atmosphere and a survivable sun, he’s dragging the Black Paladin around, see if he can freckle or something.

 

“Hey,” says Keith. “What’re you looking at?”

 

***

 

Lance isn’t a prideful person. He’s cocky, yeah, but to a point. He thinks back, back to his first day at the Garrison, to his mothers in the lobby, sandwiching him in a hug, smelling like saltwater and bags under their eyes from the shuttle trip up from Varadero and hair just the tiniest bit encrusted with salt from their celebration at Cueva de Saturno, where they spent hours diving and weaving around stalagmites and he’s getting sidetracked.

 

His moms were always flirting, even as they said goodbye, and he remembers distinctly what one said to the other before the door closed behind them and he started his life at the Galaxy Garrison and sealed his fate as Most Handsome Future Defender of the Universe. _What are_ you _looking at?_

 

“You,” says Lance, echoing his mamá’s words lightyears away, and he promptly grins. The cheesiest line he’s ever thrown out, and it wasn’t even an original. Oh well. Keith is flushed all over except the patch between his cupid’s bow and his nose, looking a fair bit like he's gained a weird white mustache, which is good enough for him. The cleft in his lip shines, scar tissue reflecting starlight, and- just- wow. _Wow._

 

“Oh, god,” Keith frowns, blush dissipating, “that sucked.” There's something in his expression that implies the exact opposite, though, so Lance cackles, leaning towards his friend.

 

“I can try again,” he promises.

 

“Don't you dare.”

 

“Are you from outer space? ‘Cause-” A palm clamps over his mouth.

 

“Nope. Not doing that.” Keith pointedly looks back outside, definitely not spurred by the paler patches of skin on Lance's forehead and jawline and throat and _hey remember the galactic collusion? Let's focus on that instead of pretty boy here_. But Lance is a middle child, and he was born knowing the most obnoxious way to get someone to take their hand off your face.

 

“Blehhh,” Lance says to himself, over exaggerating his distaste for leather by sticking his tongue out at the other paladin.

 

Keith looks shocked, which is total bull because he's _told_ the team about the girl he treated like a sister in one of his foster homes. You don't call someone “like a sibling” without doing shit like that. It's the _law._ “You-”

 

“Me?” Lance feigns innocence.

 

“You're infuriating.”

 

“I'm _great_ ,” he says, fluttering his eyelashes, every inch the cat that got the cream, and they make eye contact. One second. Two seconds.

 

Three.

  
Heralded by a choked-off noise, sounding rather like Keith has just swallowed his tongue, the world fills with what can only be colour.

 

Lance is reminded, suddenly, of trying to paint a picture for Luis’ birthday when he was four, and spilling his paint water across the paper and tearing up when it quickly covered the whole piece and started dribbling onto the floor. This is both nothing and everything like that, since this time he doesn't have an older brother to guide him through the process of _whatever_ is happening right now. “Oh, crap,” he says eloquently. Keith doesn't say anything. He looks a bit distracted.

 

It's beyond imagination, greys and blacks and whites fading into new experiences, things he absolutely knows the names of, thanks to mandatory classes way back at the Garrison, but can't quite piece together right now. Space has never been so beautiful, even when Lance was six and his big sister Veronica let him borrow her telescope and he spent two awestruck hours staring at the sky.  
  
“Lance,” breathes Keith, finally, frustratingly, _perfectly_ , knuckles of one hand white on the back of the pilot's seat, which has neon red lights, just like there’d obviously be, “do you see it?”  
  
“I should've seen it before,” Lance reprimands himself, laughing almost helplessly, reaching out for his soulmate, cradling his face in his hands. Keith moves to sit heavily in his lap, expression flipping between flat disinterest and the same amazement he faces the infinite cosmos with, and then they're kissing, fireworks of the universe all around them.  
  
A cloud of heat blooming around them, Keith gasps into Lance's mouth, and they break away from each other. “You've got _stars_ in your eyes,” he says in the most disbelieving tone he's ever used in his life. Lance just beams. Keith’s eyes are glossy, and gorgeous, and purple because _of course they are._ The tiny gear on its ribbon clinks against Lance's chin, and he kisses Keith again, and again, and then Keith is gasping and pushing him off and “look,” the collision is a colour neither of them have ever seen, a bright, bright white that has undertones of every other colour they know between the two of them, and “ _look,_ ” he repeats.

 

Lance looks. How could he not, when it’s Keith who’s asking? The spiral galaxy, whose name escapes him, is being distorted by the gravitational pull of its elliptical partner. They’re swirling into each other, arms splitting off every which way, and it’s-

 

“-purple,” Keith spreads his hands in either direction, silhouetted against the glass. “Fitting, huh?”

 

Lance snorts. “You utter dweeb.” He flattens his palms against Keith’s thighs and pecks the corner of his mouth. By now, the other residents of the castle are probably wondering where the two of them have gotten off to, but he couldn't be bothered to get back any time soon. “You love me.” It’s not a question.

 

“Oh, _no_ , not at all, you must be mistaken-” Keith drawls, sarcasm dripping honey-like off his tongue, leaning the tiniest bit away as if to protect the last bit of himself he hasn't shared. Lance pats at his face, cupping his cheek, effectively banishing the sharpness in his soulmate’s lungs.

 

“I love you,” he vows, and Keith stops breathing completely. “Stop running away, ‘cause you _know_ I'll come right after you.”

 

“Okay,” Keith whispers breathlessly. “You realise it'll take me a while to say it back?”

 

Lance doesn't even hesitate. “You've got all the time in the world to say it back. I'll make sure of it, even if it means learning necromancy 'cause you got your dumb ass killed.”

 

A laugh. A teary, unfortunate, disbelieving laugh, but it's Keith's, so it's great anyway. Lance thinks it's beautiful. Lance thinks a lot of things are beautiful, mind you, but this is in the top three. Okay, maybe top ten: Marco’s coming out when he was thirteen and Lance was fifteen and Luis was just back from his honeymoon and Veronica was visiting from college is pretty far up there. He can almost feel Red curled around his frontal lobe, a wisp of joy incarnate lashing like a spectral tail.

 

She must've planned this, the tricky robot-lioness-spirit-guardian-thing, and Lance honestly still isn't sure what she is, but either way Keith is sorely lacking in the blush area so he's got a list of things he's got in mind to resolve that, starting with 1: Kiss that boy’s whole face until the heat death of the universe, probably, and ending with 34: Write more things on the to-do list because now he _can._

 

(This is what it means to be alive, Keith has discovered over the past eighteen years:

 

  * You breathe.
  * You eat.
  * You sleep.



 

This is what it means to _live:_

 

  * You love. Simple as that. You allow the colour into your vision, and you allow him to kiss you, and you let your problems melt viscously away for another time.



 

You love, and that's what makes it worthwhile.)

**Author's Note:**

> okay so the reverse bang was stressful beyond belief but! it was a blast.
> 
> my eternal thanks to my beta, noah @genderfluidlancey, who wrote their own fic for the bang (GO CHECK IT OUT: works/14415321) and my artist, shelly @maximtomate. catch them on tumblr and tell them they're amazing! i am also there as @lesblep in case you want to yell at me about this fic (or just in general).


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